


Missed Shot

by liliaeth



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Scott McCall Week
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 12:36:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18315392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liliaeth/pseuds/liliaeth
Summary: Scott is pulled between the Argents and the Hales, after the Argents manage to capture Scott on his first full moon.





	Missed Shot

1.

Scott stared up at the men coming closer and at the man who had just shot him with an arrow. Derek Hale, the creepy guy who’d lured him here in the first place, tried to grab him and pull him loose, but seconds later he was down on the ground as well with arrows in his leg and back. Scott stared around in fear, pulling at the arrow, too scared to think of breaking it free.

He barely understood what had driven him to run out into the woods, tracking down Allison’s scent. All he could think of now was how cold the air felt on his naked chest, and how much he wished that he’d grabbed something, anything to cover up before he’d ran out.

The man smelled kind of familiar, and the fact that Scott could smell the man at this distance freaked him out even more.

Don’t hurt me, don’t shoot me, don’t …”” he wasn’t even sure what he could say, or even what he wanted to say. 

The man didn’t care. Instead he pushed a dagger into Scott’s side, making him flinch back even more, before knocking him out with the butt of his crossbow.

Scott woke up groggy and cold in a dark space, his hands tied to his feet behind his back. He winced as light hit his eyes and cold hands dragged him out of the trunk of the car he’d been placed in. He stared around, terrified, still no full idea of what was going on.  
The world had been out-of control since he’d been sitting in the shower, desperate to cool down the raging fire inside that told him he wanted … something, he wasn’t even sure what. The men didn’t seem to care about explaining what they wanted, what he’d done wrong, as they dragged him down the stairs, tying his hands behind his head this time.. They put him down next to Derek, the guy who had -- Scott wasn’t even sure what the guy had been trying to do by luring him out into the woods.

He kept twisting around, trying to find something in the room that made sense of this madness. Instead they tied some kind of wire to him, and the next thing he knew, he felt electric shocks coursing through his body.

There was something pulling inside of him, something desperate, telling him he had to get out of her, even if he had to rip and slash. By the time that feeling finally abated, he was worn out, his body feeling so heavy that he could barely move. 

Scott’s body fell slack in his chains, and he stared beside him at the older man chained up beside him. Derek seemed gruff and angry, and when their captor came down the basement, Derek held most of the man’s attention.

When the stranger came up to Scott, Derek yelled at him to leave Scott alone, making Scott try and pull back. He cringed at the man’s touch on his arm, hissing before he could stop himself.

“He doesn’t know anything, Argent,” Derek yelled. 

The guy lifted Scott’s face, and Scott tried to pull away from him, wishing he could just wake up and find out that all of this was just a bad dream the night before school started. 

But it wasn’t.

“When were you bitten, kid.”

Scott froze at the coldness in Argent’s tone. Stunned at how matter of fact the man said it, as if it were normal.

“A few days ago.” He finally answered, just before Argent headed to the machine that seemed to be connected to the electrical wires, coursing it’s stream through him. The man, Argent, turned to him.

“This… thing attacked me, I thought it was a wolf.”

Argents features softened somewhat.

“And then what happened?”

“The next morning, it had just healed. Stiles joked about werewolves, but werewolves can’t be real.”

“Sorry, kid, but they are. And you’re one now.”

Scott tried to think of the feelings he’d been struggling with all of past night, the urges he’d tried to push down. 

He wanted to cry but not here with people staring at him. Argent got closer and Scott flinched, but instead the man released the cuffs on his hands. Scott sank to the floor, falling in a heap, before he could get to his feet. Argent offered him his hand, and Scott accepted it, before taking a look back at Derek. Cold shivers going down his spine as Argent looked at him. He trembled in the cold as much as from the situation. Argent seemed almost more dangerous as he smiled at Scott.

“You and I are going to have a long long talk about the alpha that attacked you.” He said, as he placed his hand on Scott’s shoulder. “And then we’re going to talk about how to make sure you don’t harm anyone. Because if you do, we’ll have to take you down, along with that Alpha. Do you understand? .”

Scott nodded, his eyes moving back to Derek once again. 

“Don’t worry about Derek. He can stay here, nice and comfortable. I’ll have a talk with him later.” The threat in his voice was far too clear, and Scott barely dared to glance at Derek, who had started fighting his chains. 

“Leave him alone, you bastard! Think you’re so big and tough -” But before he could say anything else, their captor pulled the switch, and had Derek scream as the electricity coursing through him increased.

“Now, son. Would you rather I stay here and entertain myself with Derek. Or follow me upstairs.”  
Scott gave Derek one last look before heading to the stairs.

Once there Argent pulled a pullover from a laundry basket and threw it at Scott. Scott grabbed it without thinking, and quickly pulled it on, feeling the cold creaking through his bones, even inside.

There was a woman sitting there in the living room, waiting for them. She looked cold and regal. Her red haircut short in an almost military cut, barely longer than that of Stiles. Her hands on her lap, as she patted the couch next to her, making it clear where he was supposed to sit.

Scott awkwardly sat down, trying to take up as little space as possible. Mr. Argent sat down across of him, Scott tried not to look at either of them, keeping his head down as much as possible.

That’s how he noticed the file on the living room table. The one that had his name and picture on the front of it

“Now, Scott, you don’t mind me calling you Scott, do you?”

Scott quickly shook his head.

“How does a sixteen year old suffering from extreme asthma such as yourself, end up in a situation to be bitten by an Alpha. One might even think, that someone such as yourself would have been eager to find a … solution for your condition.”

Scott hadn’t even wanted to ask how his asthma had been gone, whether it was normal, if it came as part of the whole werewolf thing. Whether it was permanent, or only on the days around the full moon. Before he’d just thought it was a sign of whatever illness he had that seemed to increase his senses, his agility, he hadn’t even dared hope beyond that.

“You think I wanted this?” he said. 

“Some people might consider it a good deal, a gift even.” 

Scott jumped up, anger burning in his blood. 

“How can you even say that?” The woman seemed ready to interrupt him, but Scott couldn’t stop himself. “A huge monster with red eyes, gigantic claws and teeth attacked me, pushed me down into the ground, dragged me back when I tried to get away from it. When it bit me I thought I was going to die, that he was going to tear me apart, like he did to that girl who’s body I’d just found!” Scott knew he was rambling, but the very idea that he’d asked for this was just too much. He was almost shocked that they didn’t stop him sooner. Mr. Argent stared at him and Scott flinched under his gaze. He took a breath. Trying to calm down.

“I’ve been scared for days.” 

 

“Of what?” 

“That whatever was happening to me was some kind of symptoms of my body acting up right before it collapsed due to some weird kind of sickness.” He expected them to tell him he was stupid to ever think so, they didn’t. “And then, when I finally think it might somehow be starting to go better, that things were settling down...” Mrs Argent moved her hand on the couch, “I couldn’t go through the first ten minutes of being at a party without feeling like my entire body was raging up against me, my body changing into something I can’t recognize and my entire mind going insane just cause I caught a scent. Why would anyone want something like that?”

He could feel his hands twisting into claws in response to his rising anger, his sight twisting to red. He almost panicked, refusing to let it happen again, quickly sitting back down, desperate to breathe and calm down, push it away, away, until his hands went back to normal. When he looked back up, the man was staring at him, and the woman still sat quietly right beside him. As if nothing had happened.

”So you have never met the creature who bit you?”

“No.” he shivered, his hands playing with the bottom of the sweater. “I just thought, I thought it was a dream, a bad dream. I thought it was a wolf.”

“It wasn’t.” The woman seemed so calm. It only made her seem more dangerous.

Scott wasn’t sure what else there was to say, what more they wanted to know. He wanted to run, but every time he even considered doing so, he remembered the pain of the crossbow bolt in his arm, the knife stabbed in his side, and he stayed put.

“And I’m sure your mother must have been worried when you told her what happened. We will of course have to talk with her, it is always difficult for parents in these kind of situations.”

“Please no!” The woman looked at him, he quickly backed away from his outburst. “She can’t know. Please don’t tell her.”

He wasn’t sure if he imagined the pleased reaction that shone in her eyes for a second, but it was quickly replaced with the same sense of calm. It made him wonder if he should have made them talk to his Mom. He just couldn’t. This was his Mom they were talking about. What if they went after her as well?

“I’m not so sure on that, Scott. A mother might need to know these kind of things, these kinds of changes her child is going through.”

“Please.” Don’t tell her I’m a monster, please don’t make me tell her, please don’t make her look at me, like you already are “Please don’t,” was all he ended up saying.

“We won’t, as long as you give us no reason to do so.”

In other words, as long as he did what they told him to.

“What happened last night, Scott.” The way Mr. Argent used his name, it was like a warning, ‘we know who you are, and there’s nowhere you can hide from us.’

“I… everything just went so well at tryouts, I was actually able to stop any ball the team tried to score on me. Better than that, I had a date, this girl, she…, I couldn’t believe she’d actually agreed when I asked her to go to Lydia’s party with me. And then I went to Stiles, and I thought everything was going perfect, just this once. Only he was talking crazy. He’d had one of his research stints, he gets those some times, and he’d been reading stuff on… on werewolves. He said that the way I played in the tryouts, that it wasn’t just good, that it was better than I should have any chance of being. He figured it out, Stiles is good at that kind of thing.” Scott remembered Stiles trying to cancel his date, and maybe he should have let him. But it had all been so damn impossible. The notion that werewolves were real was just beyond the stretches of anything rational. 

“When I was at the party, it was like something was trying to tear out of me. My head hurt, it was like the world was on fire, like I had a fever and something was trying to crawl out from under my skin. I just, I had to get home, to get away.”

“And your date.”

Scott stared down, guilty. “I left her there. She probably hates me now. I just couldn’t think of anything, except that I had to get away, had to be by myself.”

“You were right to do so,” Mr. Argent said, “if you’d stayed, you might have hurt her, or others.”

Scott’s eyes shot wide open at the very suggestion, but remembering last night, he couldn’t help but feel they were right. It only scared him more. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“That’s good. But it won’t be that easy. The thing inside of you, it’s going to want to kill, no matter how much your remaining humanity might be against it.” The words hit hard. Scott cringed as the couple continued their interrogation. Question followed question.

“How had he gotten to the woods?” He told them about Stiles telling him about Derek, tracking her scent, and finding Derek waiting for him. 

“How did you know Derek?” He told them about meeting Derek in the woods, Stiles telling him about the fire.

And on and on it went.

Argent’s interrogation was brutal, worse than anything either his Mom or the sheriff had ever given him. At the end of it, Scott was exhausted and feeling like he knew even less about any of it all than he did before. He was worried sick for Derek, still tied up in the basement, and he had no idea how his Mom might feel if she didn’t find him at home when she got back from work.

“I’m sorry, kid. But what you are now, it’s dangerous. Whether you’d normally want it or not, part of you is going to always be an animal, out to kill and destroy. You’re going to have to hold a leash on your anger, especially during the full moon. If you don’t find a way to keep from hurting people, we’ll have no choice but to take you down, no matter how young you are.”

And the further Chris went into talking about the threat Scott was now, the harder it got for Scott to breathe. He was heading into an asthma attack, when the door opened and Allison came in, Stiles right behind her.

“Scott?”

Scott wanted to tell them to get away from him, to make sure he couldn’t hurt them, but Stiles was already running up to him, a second later he pushed Scott’s inhaler in Scott’s face. Scott grabbed it almost out of habit, and took breath after breath, until he finally calmed down enough to notice Allison asking her Dad what Scott was doing there, that Stiles and her had been looking for him all morning, when he hadn’t shown up at school.

It was then that Scott made the connection, he’d been too scared to realize before, Allison Argent, Argent. If Stiles hadn’t been there, holding his hand, he’d have slipped right back into a panic attack.

“Your friend had a small accident last night, I was just helping him out.” Mr. Argent said.  
Scott recognized a dismissal when he heard it, along with the glare Mr. Argent gave him as soon as Allison turned her back to him. 

“I didn’t know the two of you knew one another.”

“I told you, I was on a date last night. Only Scott got sick and left me there. And then he wasn’t at school.”

“I see.”

The look Allison’s mother gave him made him feel like someone was walking over his grave and tearing out his spine at the same time, no matter how scary Mr Argent might be, his wife was a thousand times worse.  
“I’m sure … Scott will be just fine now. And he’ll know better, won’t he?”

The warning was clear, ‘stay away from Allison’. But all Scott could think of was Derek, who was still downstairs in the basement. Derek who’d been waiting for him in the woods, using Allison’s sweater. 

Derek whom he knew nothing about, other than that he’d lost his family, and he’d tried to protect Scott from Mr. Argent, down in the basement, who’d tried to save Scott when they’d both been about to be captured.

“What about Derek?” he asked.

“That depends on Derek, doesn’t it.”

Scott was shaking as he got into Stiles’ jeep with him, Allison staying behind, asking questions that her father wasn’t answering. Scott let his head sink on Stiles dashboard. Stiles just kept asking questions, but all Scott could think of, was Derek still stuck in that basement. 

“Does my Mom…?”

“I told her you slept over at my place. “

Mom didn’t know, Allison… even Stiles, Scott could have hurt them. 

He left the team before he was even on it, he avoided Allison, he’d have avoided Stiles if Stiles had let him. Anything to keep from harming anyone, to keep Mr. Argent from having to kill him. He didn’t want to harm anyone. He didn’t want to have anyone’s blood on his hands.

So when he woke up in the woods two nights later, he called Mr. Argent about it. 

Derek was avoiding him and it’s not like he had any reason to trust the Alpha.

What else could he do?

Mr. Argent showed up about half an hour after Scott’s call. He was seemingly unarmed, but Scott didn’t dare believe he actually was.

They tracked through the woods, following up to the point where Scott had woken up, finding himself in a cave.

“That’s the second time I woke up here.” Scott whispered.

“Did you have any blood on you?”

Scott stared at his hands. Trying to find any trace, but not finding any.

“None that I could see.” Or smell or feel, or…

“Good.”

“There was just… this shadow, like something was following me.”

“He probably was. The Alpha isn’t going to leave you be. He’s going to want to use you.”

Scott’s breath stalled. He remembered thinking at first that Derek was the one who’d bitten him.  
But Argent had set him right on that. He’d told Scott only an Alpha could turn a human into a werewolf. And whatever else Derek was, he wasn’t an Alpha.

“But why?” Scott shivered, keeping his hands in his pants pockets to keep warm. “Why would he want me? I’m nobody.”

“You’re his beta. Wolves grow stronger in packs. The more betas an Alpha has, the stronger the Alpha.”

“He’s going to do this to others?”

“Possibly, as soon as he gets you and Derek Hale under his control.”

Scott turned away from him. All of this, it was just way too much. He’d wanted to talk to Stiles about it, but Stiles just kept coming up with stuff he’d found online. As far as Stiles was concerned, this whole werewolf thing was ‘the coolest shit ever.’ 

Scott didn’t agree. He’d tried to explain it, how it felt like something living under his skin, like there was something inside of him, that got angry when he got angry. Only this other thing when it got angry, it didn’t just want to protest, or yell, or kick something. It wanted to shred people to pieces. And Scott had no idea if he had the strength to hold it back if it tried.

“Have you talked to Allison lately?” The question seemed innocent, but Scott knew it wasn’t.

“No, I swear, I haven’t been near her.”

“Good. She’s too young to be involved in any of this.” Scott didn’t dare point out that he was just as young as Allison was. But then again, it wasn’t like he had a choice about any of this. Maybe it was for the best, if it kept Allison safe;

“Mr. Argent.” Scott asked, just as the hunter was about to head away from him.

“Yes, Scott.”

“What will you do if you find the Alpha?”

“Stop him. Any way I have to.”

And that was it. Soon after the hunter left, leaving Scott alone in the woods. Scott kicked a rock trying to guess how far he could push it. He kept walking, he wasn’t even sure where he was going, just following a vaguely familiar scent. When he ended up at the remains of the old Hale house, he couldn’t help but wonder how near the Alpha had drawn him to it.

He wondered if Mr. Argent had even realized it. The man probably did. Scott looked back, wondering if the hunter had followed him. But how could he know, Mr.Mr. Argent probably knew how to avoid Scott’s sense of smell.

Scott stared up at the burned out shell of what had once upon a time been a grand house. He tried to remembered what Stiles had told him about the fire, that Derek’s entire family had died in it. And he couldn’t help but imagine how such a thing would traumatize anyone. So how would it affect someone who was already as violent as werewolves tended to be. As Scott found himself fighting the urge to be. 

“What are you doing here? Argent let you off your leash?”

Scott turned around, staring at Derek who practically radiated anger. He shivered under the older werewolf’s glare. 

“I don’t know. I just… the Alpha drew me near here. I was just wondering why.”  
Derek snorted before he walked back up to the house.

“Is it even safe in there?”

“It’s safer than letting an Argent tell you what to do.” Derek answered.

It was clear that for him the conversation was over. 

“Then what else am I supposed to do?” Scott demanded. He was just so tired of Derek’s silence, especially after he’d been the one to lure Scott to the woods in the first place. “You won’t talk to me, the Argents will at least tell me what’s happening to me, how to control myself. How else am I supposed to make sure I don’t end up harming anyone?”

Derek glared back, but Scott refused to bow down under it. It’s not like he had options. The Argents already knew what he was, they knew the threat he could pose. And Scott didn’t want to be a threat, he wanted for all of this to just be over.

“You could stay away from them.”

“Why? They’ve been a lot more helpful than you’ve been.”

“Help. Right, the Argents are so damn helpful.” Derek practically spat out the words. “Who were they helping when they started the fire? Who were they helping when they murdered … “”

Scott winced as Derek cut off his words. Realizing the pain the other werewolf was suffering.

“Then what am I supposed to do? I can’t go on not trusting anyone?”

Derek looked over his shoulder, turning back at Scott.

Part of him wanted to run, it would be the smart thing to do, the safe thing even, but he couldn’t.

Derek turned back, and pushed him towards his car. Scott didn’t dare ask him what he wanted.  
They ended up at a long-term care home. They walked through the halls, and Scott could practically smell the misery clinging in the air around him. They ended up in a single room, a bed by the side, and a man sitting in a chair near the window. His head down. 

“Who’s that?” Scott asked.

“My uncle, Peter Hale.”

“Is he, like you, a werewolf?” The man was quiet, sitting in his chair, his head bent over, he acted as if he was fully unaware of what was going on around him. 

“He was. Now he’s barely even human. “ The harsh breathing coming out of the man was the only thing breaking the silence. “Six years ago, my sister and I were at school, and our house caught fire. Eleven people were trapped inside He was the only survivor.”

“So what makes you so sure that they set the fire?” Scott tried not to think at the clinical look on Victoria’s face as she’d described just what would happen to him if they’d found him spilling innocent blood. He’d known she’d be just as uncaring when her husband had to cut him in two.

“They’re the only ones that knew about us.” Derek said.

But just because they knew, didn’t mean they’d kill people who hadn’t harmed anyone. 

“Then… they had a reason?” They had to have a reason, they couldn’t just … no matter how stern they were, they were human, too…”

“Like what? You tell me what justifies this?” Derek grabbed his uncle’s chair and turned the man to Scott. Scott took a step back as he saw the wreck that was left behind of the man’s face. Burned, scarred. “They say they’ll only kill an adult, and only with absolute proof, but there were people in my family that were perfectly ordinary in that fire. This is what they do! It’s what they’ll do to you, once they can no longer use you. They pretend to be helpful, they pretend to care. But to them, all you’ll ever be is a monster. “

Scott froze, staring at the broken remnant of a man in front of him. Trying to imagine his own mother in Peter Hale’s place, in that fire. 

When Derek dropped off at home, Scott looked at him. 

“But if I can’t trust them, then what do I do?”


End file.
